Figure 1: HMS Prince of Wales photographed in 1941, sometime prior to her 24 May 1941 engagement with the German battleship Bismarck. She is lowering a Supermarine "Walrus" amphibian aircraft over the side. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 2: Sinking of HMS Hood, painting by J.C. Schmitz-Westerholt, depicting Hood's loss during her engagement with the German battleship Bismarck on 24 May 1941. HMS Prince of Wales is in the foreground. Courtesy of the U.S. Army Chief of Military History. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 3: Atlantic Charter Conference, 10-12 August 1941. HMS Prince of Wales off Argentia, Newfoundland, after bringing Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Photographed from USS Augusta (CA-31). Donation of Vice Admiral Harry Sanders, USN(Retired), 1969. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 4: Atlantic Charter Conference, 10-12 August 1941. USS McDougal (DD-358) alongside HMS Prince of Wales, to transfer President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the British battleship for a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Photographed in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Donation of Vice Admiral Harry Sanders, USN(Retired), 1969. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 5: Atlantic Charter Conference, 10-12 August 1941. Church service on the after deck of HMS Prince of Wales, in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, during the conference. Seated in the center are President Franklin D. Roosevelt (left) and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Standing behind them are Admiral Ernest J. King, USN (between Roosevelt and Churchill); General George C. Marshall, U.S. Army; General Sir John Dill, British Army; Admiral Harold R. Stark, USN; and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, RN. USS Arkansas (BB-33) is in the center distance. Donation of Vice Admiral Harry Sanders, USN(Retired), 1969. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 6: Atlantic Charter Conference, 10-12 August 1941. Conference leaders during church services on the after deck of HMS Prince of Wales, in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (left) and Prime Minister Winston Churchill are seated in the foreground. Standing directly behind them are Admiral Ernest J. King, USN; General George C. Marshall, U.S. Army; General Sir John Dill, British Army; Admiral Harold R. Stark, USN; and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, RN. At far left is Harry Hopkins, talking with W. Averell Harriman. Donation of Vice Admiral Harry Sanders, USN(Retired), 1969. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 7: Picture of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the crew of the HMS Prince of Wales after returning from the Churchill/Roosevelt meeting at Placentia Bay in August 1941. Courtesy John Barley. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 8: HMS Prince of Wales mooring in Singapore, 4 December 1941, six days before she was sunk by Japanese aircraft. Courtesy Imperial War Museum, Identification Code 4700-01 A 6786. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 9: Loss of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, 10 December 1941. Photograph taken from a Japanese aircraft during the initial high-level bombing attack. Repulse, near the bottom of the view, has just been hit by one bomb and near-missed by several more. Prince of Wales is near the top of the image, generating a considerable amount of smoke. Japanese writing in the lower right states that the photograph was reproduced by authorization of the Navy Ministry. Donation of Mr. Theodore Hutton, 1942. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 10: Loss of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, 10 December 1941. Photograph taken from a Japanese plane, with Prince of Wales at far left and Repulse beyond her. A destroyer, either Express or Electra, is maneuvering in the foreground. Dulin and Garzke's "Allied Battleships in World War II", page 199, states that this photograph was taken "after the first torpedo attack, during which the Prince of Wales sustained heavy torpedo damage." Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Click on photograph for larger image.
HMS Prince of Wales was a 43,786-ton King George V class battleship that was built at the Cammell Laird Shipyard at Birkenhead, England, and was completed on 31 March 1941. She was approximately 745 feet long and 112 feet wide and had a top speed of 29 knots and a crew of 1,521 officers and men. Prince of Wales was armed with ten 14-inch guns, 16 5.25-inch guns, 48 2-pounder antiaircraft guns, and eight 20-mm antiaircraft guns. This massive battleship also carried four Supermarine Walrus seaplanes.
In late May 1941, even though she was still not fully operational, Prince of Wales was sent out with the battlecruiser HMS Hood to locate and sink the German battleship Bismarck. The two British ships located the Bismarck and its escort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland on 24 May. What followed was the tragic Battle of the Denmark Strait, in which the Hood was sunk with almost its entire crew (only three sailors survived out of a crew of 1,418 officers and men). During the battle, Prince of Wales suffered several hits and was forced to retreat. Although the Royal Navy eventually cornered and sank the Bismarck, the loss of the Hood and the damage inflicted on the brand new battleship Prince of Wales was a severe blow to Great Britain.
After Prince of Wales was repaired, she carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. Once there, Churchill met President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Atlantic Charter Conference from 9 - 12 August 1941. It was the first meeting between the two leaders, who were trying to forge a “Grand Alliance” against the Axis powers.
After the conference was over, Prince of Wales brought the Prime Minister back to England. The battleship then was sent to the Mediterranean for convoy escort duty, where she successfully shot down some Italian warplanes off the coast of Malta in late September.
With war looming with Japan in the Pacific, Churchill decided to send Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse to reinforce Singapore and Malaya. Known as “Force Z,” the two British ships were escorted by four destroyers and placed under the command of Admiral Sir Tom Phillips. Repulse, Prince of Wales, and their four escorts reached Singapore on 2 December 1941. On 8 December (7 December at Pearl Harbor, which was on the other side of the International Date Line), Japanese forces landed in northern Malaya. Admiral Phillips took Force Z out of Singapore to attack the Japanese invasion force. Admiral Phillips knew that the local Royal Air Force units possessed only a few obsolete Brewster “Buffalo” fighters and that they could not guarantee air cover for his ships. But Phillips decided to continue searching for the Japanese because he truly believed that his ships were relatively immune from air attack. Up to that point no capital ship had ever been sunk by aircraft at sea. The largest ship sunk at sea by aircraft was a heavy cruiser.
Force Z left Singapore and frantically searched for the Japanese. Unable to locate the Japanese invasion fleet, the British ships decided to return to Singapore. But late in the morning of 10 December 1941, Force Z was discovered and attacked by a large force of Japanese high-level bombers and torpedo planes. Because there were no Allied aircraft covering Force Z, the Japanese planes soon began scoring numerous bomb and torpedo hits on both Repulse and Prince of Wales. Repulse sank at about 1230, with the Pince of Wales going down less than an hour later. These were the first capital ships in naval history to be sunk by air attack while steaming at sea and their loss stunned the world. The escorting destroyers picked up many men, but approximately 840 British sailors died in the attack. The Japanese lost only six aircraft.
The destruction of Repulse and Prince of Wales, along with the crippling of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, marked an enormous turning point in military history. Aircraft could now sink major warships either at sea or in port and the captal ship was no longer invulnerable to air attack. The airplane was now the true power at sea and the side that possessed air superiority would win any future war. True, there were numerous naval battles during World War II where aircraft did not play a role, but it was now impossible to deny that the side that had air superiority also had an enormous advantage over an opponent. Furthermore, old-fashioned officers like Admiral Phillips had to come to terms with the fact that the battleship was no longer the most powerful weapon in the navy and that expensive battleships could now be easily destroyed by cheap and expendable aircraft. Unfortunately, Phillips would never be able to learn from his mistakes. He went down with the Prince of Wales.
